It is desirable to evaluate how test persons respond to a variety of stimuli including, but not limited to, advertising commercials, TV shows, cinema movies computer games, TV games, internet, speeches, price information, audio-visual presentations in general, touch/feel, taste and smell. It has become increasingly clear that our emotional response to stimuli is autonomous and that the test persons only become aware of their response up to a full second after their brain have received the stimuli, if at all. In market and other research it is of great value to obtain data that is biologically objective and free from the test person's subjective interpretation.
The fact remains that today the most common measure or way of testing certain stimuli is by conducting introspective analysis (ask) or monitor what the test person does (see). There is a need for a tool, which enables developers of audio-visual and other stimuli to measure, in a cost effective manner, the objective biometric response to these stimuli. Attempts are being made with measuring pupil dilation, muscle movement and other measures, but these are only used to measuring a fraction of possible autonomous responses and cannot give an understanding of memory processes in the brain. Brain activity measurement techniques such as EEG, fMRI and others can.
Brain activity measures have been performed regularly for several years by now, but they are costly, labour intensive and complicated to perform. This is especially the case when a high temporal resolution is required for the analysis of video sequences, where the response to a large number of frames needs to be analyzed.
In order to be able to produce and adjust stimuli, such as audio-visual stimuli, to provide stimuli with a high impact and/or acceptance among persons exposed to the stimuli, the developers of the stimuli must be able to identify precisely which part(s) of the stimuli, such as a single frame in a video sequence, that induces a desired response in the test person. These responses relate to but are not limited to interpretations regarding the test person's attention level, his preferences (positive, neutral or negative), memory activation (working or long-term) and intention of action.
Schmidt et al. describes in U.S. Pat. No. 5,243,517 a method for automatically evaluating the emotional response of a test person to stimuli, such as a movie sequence for advertisement purposes. EEG signals measured on the test person are analyzed by a signal analyzing computer and information regarding the intent to buy and the memory of the product is derived by a two-step method, wherein the test person must view the video sequence twice, in order to provide the measurement of the response. The temporal resolution of the method according to U.S. Pat. No. 5,243,517 is in the order of seconds and this method hence provides a measurement of the average of the test person's response during this time.
Hunter et al. describes in U.S. Pat. No. 6,236,885 a system for synchronising the response of the test individual to a certain stimuli with the stimuli itself. The stimuli and the measuring components of the system are synchronized and controlled automatically to provide precise synchronization.
The above technologies primarily work on the central nervous system. However, in addition to the above other supportive measures can be made on the somatic and autonomic nervous systems supporting the findings from the analysis on the central nervous system. In some cases the analysis made on the somatic and autonomic nervous system may stand alone.